Conventional wet suits which have heretofore been employed for skin-diving, scuba-diving, surfing, fishing and so on are made of a wet suit material comprising a closed-cell sponge sheet made of a synthetic rubber such as a chloroprene rubber and a stretch fabric, such as a nylon jersey, a nylon tricot and the like, bonded as the backing to the sponge sheet at one surface thereof, the other surface of the sponge sheet being in smooth or embossed form and serving as a face. The sponge sheet is employed because it provides good heat retaining properties and good workability which facilitates the movement of a human body. A chloroprene rubber is usually employed as the material of the rubber sponge sheet because of its good weatherability. A nylon jersey or tricot having good stretchability provides good wearability for the wet suit. The synthetic rubber sponge sheet contains carbon black incorporated therein in order to increase the strength of the sponge sheet. Accordingly, the processed wet suits usually have a black face appearance. The conventional wet suits of the structure as described above have such a weak face skin that they easily get scratches and they are easily torn where subjected to the scratches, sometimes causing fatal damage thereof.
These days, goods for leisure time amusement including wet suits tend to be more and more colorful. For making a colorful wet suit, in general, a pigmented synthetic resin coating film is formed on the back sponge sheet. However, the coating film is inevitably thin because otherwise the stretchability of the wet suit is spoiled. In this case, the color of the pigmented synthetic resin coating film does not appear as it is at the surface of the wet suit, but the mixed color thereof with the black of the sponge sheet appears.
As a means of solving the problem of the weak face skin and of providing a colorful wet suit, a colorful jersey or tricot may further be bonded as the face material to the surface of the sponge sheet opposite to the backing to form a wet suit of sandwich structure. In this case, however, the face material of the jersey or tricot is easily soaked with water, which is then rapidly evaporated when exposed to the atmosphere or wind, causing the cooling of the wet suit and the reduction of the body temperature of a human body wearing the wet suit which are especially notable in sports such as surfing in which the player moves through the air. Furthermore, the wet suit, when soaked with water, becomes heavy by the weight of the water, making the movement of the wearer dull.
It has been found that the above-mentioned drawbacks of the conventional wet suits can be obviated by bonding a polyurethane film to one surface of a synthetic rubber sponge sheet, the other surface of which has a stretch fabric bonded thereto. The present invention has been completed based on this finding.